Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A Convenient Silence

Megan McArdle says torture is wrong. Megan does not say that torturers should be prosecuted. Megan does not mention Bush. Megan does not mention Iraq. Megan does not mention Glenn Greenwald's excoriation of her lackadaisical attitude towards torture while it was going on. Megan is a putz.

6 comments:

clever pseudonym
said...

It must be so exhausting for Megan to constantly have to explain to her intellectual inferiors about why they are always wrong and she is always right. I wonder if the condescending tone comes naturally or if she has to practice at it?

Megan does not mention Glenn Greenwald's excoriation of her lackadaisical attitude towards torture while it was going on.I'm grateful for this, because my head would explode if McArdle ever did anything of that sort.

For another, arguing that something doesn't work isn't necessarily an argument for not doing it.I swear, that has to be the most embarrassing, laughable attempt at sounding profound I've ever read - and as a humanities academic who has had to wade through a lot of "work" by self-described theorists that's saying something.

I went back and reread all her stuff on torture, and she's been pretty consistently against it. Yet she argued with Greenwald about the importance of writing about torture. The only thing those two events have in common is Megan protecting her image/self-image as a good person. She usually is only interested in something if it affects her personally, but she also cares about her public image as a moral person. Which is tied in with her image as an elite person, since to her the elite are more moral.

So we get protestations of being anti-torture without Megan caring much about the context--Bush's administration and the Iraq war, both of which she supported. She recognizes no responsibility for her actions and acknowledges no consequences.